In a letter sent today to Ohio Supreme Court justices Robert Cupp and
Terrence O’Donnell, former Judge William O’Neill asked the Republican
justices to recuse themselves from a case presenting conflicts of interest or
refuse the campaign money that caused the conflicts of interest to begin
with.

“The First Energy Family has contributed more than
$44,000.00 into re-election campaigns for Justices Cupp and O’Donnell
this year alone,” O’Neill, a Democrat who is running for the Ohio
Supreme Court, wrote. “It is simply wrong for them to continue sitting
on First Energy cases.”

The Ohio Supreme Court, which has seven justices decide
the state’s top judicial cases, is currently handling a case
involving FirstEnergy, an energy company based in Akron. More than
300,000 customers are suing the company over alleged fraud. The 11th
District Court of Appeals previously ruled against FirstEnergy, and the case was appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

The lawsuit is the fifth Ohio Supreme Court case involving FirstEnergy this year.

O’Neill pointed out the lawsuit “could easily be a billion
dollar case” before writing, “And the public has a right to know that
the ruling was not purchased by one side or another.”

Ohio Sen. Mike Skindell, a Democrat who is also running
for the Ohio Supreme Court, endorsed O’Neill’s letter. In the past, he
also criticized Cupp and O’Donnell for potential conflicts of interest.

The offices of Cupp and O'Donnell did not immediately respond to CityBeat's requests for comment on the letter. This story will be updated if responses become available.

UPDATE OCT. 4, 4:12 P.M.: Mark Weaver, spokesperson for Cupp, responded: “Mr. O'Neill previously raised this argument with disciplinary authorities by filing a complaint. It was reviewed by disciplinary authorities, and they unanimously dismissed it as having no merit.”

A longtime campaign consultant has decided to jump into politics himself. Jeff Cramerding announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination to run for Hamilton County treasurer next year.

Cramerding, 38, of Price Hill, is a local attorney who has served as a consultant to numerous area politicians, mostly Democrats and Charterites. They include Denise Driehaus, David Pepper, Jody Luebbers and Chris Bortz.

The campaign manager of Mike Wilson, the Republican candidate for state representative in Ohio’s 28th district, sent out a press release late afternoon Monday. Its headline read: “Wilson stands with military voters: Opposed Obama effort to attack military voting rights.”

The accusation localized a national issue that had been driven through networks all weekend. It started with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. On Saturday, after Romney was asked a question about a lawsuit President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party had filed against state officials to restore all early voting in Ohio, the Romney camp posted a statement on Romney’s Facebook page: "President Obama's lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage." The message went on to say Romney stands by the "fifteen military groups" opposing the lawsuit.To be clear, the lawsuit Obama and the Democratic Party filed on July 17 is not meant to diminish or take away anyone’s voting rights. On the contrary, it is meant to give early voting rights to everyone, including military personnel. Right now, in-person early voting begins on Oct. 2, but it is cut off three days before Election Day for everyone except military personnel and their families, who keep the right to vote in-person on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Election Day. If the lawsuit is successful, those three days of in-person early voting will be extended to the rest of Ohio’s voting population.

So any accusation that Obama and the Democrats are trying to take away or attack anyone’s voting rights is false.

But that has not deterred Republicans from using the attack. They used it in press releases and statements all day Monday. The Wilson campaign invoked the attack in its own press release when it said it opposed the “Obama effort to attack military voting rights.” But Wilson’s opposition is a bit more nuanced than the political spin Republicans have wrongfully put on Obama’s lawsuit.

“I think there are a few potential outcomes out of the lawsuit: One is the three days are extended to everyone, another is the court strikes down the three days altogether,” Wilson says.

Wilson is worried a court could agree with the premise of the lawsuit — that it is unconstitutional to give one group of people, meaning military personnel, extra voting rights — but not the goal of the lawsuit: that all in-person early voting rights should be extended to all Ohio citizens. The result of that ruling could be the repeal of the three extra in-person voting days. That would ensure everyone’s rights are treated equally because then no one would have the extra right of voting in-person one, two or three days early.

However, this outcome is not desirable by the Obama team or the Democrats. On the contrary, Ohio Democrats have repeatedly pushed for legislation that restores early voting rights Republican legislators did away with in H.B. 194 and H.B. 224 in 2011. Before those two laws, Ohio allowed everyone to vote in-person a full five weeks before Election Day. So if Obama and the Democrats had their way, this lawsuit would not be necessary because all in-person early voting days would still be available to all Ohio voters, just like they were in 2008 and 2010.

If the Obama lawsuit reaches its goal and voting rights are extended to all citizens, Wilson still has some concerns. Under that scenario, Wilson is worried military personnel would have longer lines when they go out to vote, which he says would be harder on military personnel that have restrictions on travel and free time due to their jobs.

But those restrictions on travel and free time are why absentee ballots exist in the first place, and absentee ballots would be unaffected by the Obama lawsuit. Absentee ballots allow voters — traditionally military voters — to mail in ballots without showing up to a polling station. Military personnel can start mailing in absentee ballots starting on Oct. 2, regardless of the lawsuit.

The two scenarios Wilson presented are similar to the reasons given by military organizations for opposing the lawsuit.

Even if either scenario came true, all Ohioans — including military personnel — will still be able to vote early starting Oct. 2. The lawsuit only deals with in-person voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Election Day.

Misleading headline bogs down otherwise accurate story on important issue

In-person early voting in Hamilton County has been given a minimum price tag: $18,676. That’s how much The Cincinnati Enquirer
says it will cost to staff polling booths in downtown
Cincinnati during the early voting hours directed by Secretary of
State Jon Husted.

Unfortunately, in an effort to appear as if the early voting issue has two sides, the Enquirer
never bothered putting the number in context. The article reads as if
that number, which amounts to $406 an hour, is a big expense for
Hamilton County. In reality, the additional cost would amount to about
0.009 percent of the 2012 county budget — a rounding error in the $206 million budget.

Meanwhile, the Enquirer downplayed a new $300,000 cost to county taxpayers in the top story for today's paper. The article pointed out the unnecessary cost is due to county commissioners refusing to make a tough decision, but the headline made it seem like the county is getting away with little-to-no trouble.

Over the weekend, Ohio’s early voting battle caught national headlines again when Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party, told The Columbus Dispatch
in an email, “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the
voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American —
voter-turnout machine.” The statement echoed earlier statements from
former Florida Republican Chairman Jim Greer, who told MSNBC that voting
restrictions are an attempt to limit voting from minorities and younger
voters.

The admission to racial politics confirmed suspicions from Democrats that limiting early voting hours is at least partly about
suppressing the vote among demographics that typically vote Democrat.

The estimate comes in the middle of an ongoing controversy
regarding in-person early voting hours. Husted
said Wednesday that counties must all follow the same early voting
hours. But the hours excluded early voting during the weekend, much to
the dismay of state Democrats. In response, Democrats in Montgomery
County, which is where Dayton is, decided to try having weekend voting
anyway, and Husted suspended and threatened to fire the Democrats on the
Montgomery County Board of Elections. Democrats were not happy with the threats.

“It's outrageous and borderline criminal,” said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, in a statement.

Ohio Democrats held a rally in Columbus this morning in
support of Montgomery County Democrats. The Dayton-area Democrats appeared in a hearing with Husted today to see if they will be fired
from the Montgomery County Board of Elections. A decision will be given later in the week.

At the hearing, Dennis Lieberman, one of the Democrats on the Montgomery County Board of Elections,
said he “was not put on the board of elections to be a puppet.”
Lieberman also pointed out that Montgomery County saved $200,000 in the
2008 elections by lowering the amount of precincts required with weekend
voting.

The controversy is following up an earlier controversy
about county-by-county discrepancies in early voting hours — an issue
Hamilton County barely avoided when Husted
directed county boards to invoke uniform in-person early voting hours
across the state a day before Hamilton County Board of Election
hearings.

In his first major case while moonlighting for Stan Chesley’s law firm, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters suffered a crushing defeat earlier this month when a jury rejected a product liability claim seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages. As a result, Deters has scuttled his plans to eventually move full-time into the private sector and instead will seek reelection as prosecutor in 2012, say Republican Party sources.

Ohio’s median income dropped last year, according to a new
report from the U.S. Census Bureau. But rates of poverty and uninsured
rates remained the same. Nationwide, uninsured rates dropped from 16.3
percent in 2010 to 15.7 percent in 2011, meaning 1.4 million people
gained health coverage. Some of that is attributable to health-care reform passed by President Barack Obama.

Former University of Cincinnati President Greg Williams is
getting a pretty nice going-away present. The Board of Trustees approved
a package for Williams that adds up to more than $1.2 million. It
includes a bonus, retirement benefits, consulting fees, a year’s salary
and a contract buyout. Williams abruptly left UC on Aug. 21, citing
personal reasons.

With the support of Democrats and Republicans, the Ohio
legislature approved pension reforms yesterday. The reforms lower benefits, raise
contributions requirements, increase the retirement eligibility age, establish new cost-of-living guidelines and set a new
formula to calculate benefits, all for future retirees. For the most part, current retirees are
not affected. Senate President Tom Niehaus, a Republican, said, “We know
the changes are not popular, but they are necessary.” Before the
changes, the system was losing $1 million a day, according to a
statement from Rep. Robert Hagan, a Democrat.

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio is pushing against banks that
take advantage of college students. In a letter to Higher One, Brown
told the bank to rework its contracts with universities. Brown wrote in
the letter, “Federal student aid programs should help students prepare
for the future, not extract fee income from them.” He went on to ask the
bank to redo its contracts so they are “consumer-friendly and
consistent with reforms that Congress enacted for the credit card
market.”

Vice President Joe Biden was in Dayton yesterday. During his speech, he spoke about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya, which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Biden vowed justice will be served.

Numbers USA to air TV, radio ads here

A conservative organization that advocates for immigration reform will begin running TV and radio commercials in Southwest Ohio next week that attempt to pressure House Speaker John Boehner (R-West Chester) to allow a vote on the “E-Verify” bill.

The group, Numbers USA, said Boehner is letting the bill languish in the House Ways and Means Committee so Republicans don’t anger Latino voters in an election year. The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill last year.

The commercials include a 30-second TV ad and a one-minute radio ad.

Next to an image of Boehner, the TV spot states, “Meet House Republican Speaker John Boehner. He won’t let Congress vote on E-Verify. Thanks to Speaker Boehner, illegal aliens can keep American jobs. Now Americans, meet the telephone … tell him to bring E-Verify for a vote or he may not like your vote in November.”

Under the bill, the federal government’s voluntary E-Verify system that is used to check the immigration status of employees would become mandatory nationwide.

Currently seven states require E-Verify checks and 12 others require state agencies and contractors to use it. The federal government has operated its system for the past 15 years.

About 300,000 of the 2.2 million U.S. employers with five or more employees were enrolled in E-Verify as of autumn 2011, according to workforce.com.

The Internet-based system checks any employee’s personal information against the Social Security database and several Homeland Security databases.

If the employee is confirmed, that person is authorized to work. If the person isn’t confirmed, he or she has eight working days to contest the finding with the Social Security Administration or the Department of Homeland Security.

“Speaker Boehner has supported legislation with E-Verify in the past, and the issue is currently working its way through the committee process,” Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, told The Washington Times earlier this month.

But Numbers USA isn’t convinced, and has launched the ad blitz in response.

Numbers USA said the bill would crack down on the hiring of undocumented immigrants and free up jobs that could be taken by unemployed U.S. citizens.

Critics, however, said the electronic monitoring system proposed by the E-Verify bill would be fraught with errors due to it reliance on incomplete or outdated databases. They cite the number of people who have mistakenly been placed on Homeland Security’s terrorist watch list as an example.

Further, opponents believe the bill would lead to more under-the-table hiring, while some Libertarians have worried that it’s a backdoor method for implementing a national I.D. card system.

The bill has caused some unlikely political alliances.

Supporters of the bill include President Barack Obama, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Opponents include the American Civil Liberties Union and several labor unions.

Based in Virginia, Numbers USA was founded in 1997 by Roy Beck, an author and ex-journalist who worked for anti-immigration activist John Tanton. Tanton also helped form two other groups, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Numbers USA wants to reduce U.S. immigration levels to pre-1965 levels. The group’s website states, “The 1990s saw the biggest population boom in U.S. history … this population boom was almost entirely engineered by federal forced-growth policies that are still in place. The Census Bureau states that Americans will suffer this kind of rapid congestion every decade into the future unless Congress changes these policies.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that monitors extremist groups, has said Numbers USA, FAIR and CIS have connections to white supremacist and neo-Nazi leaders.

A 2009 report by the center states, “FAIR, CIS and Numbers USA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the ‘puppeteer’ of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots.”

The report added, “As the first article in this report shows, Tanton has for decades been at the heart of the white nationalist scene. He has met with leading white supremacists, promoted anti-Semitic ideas, and associated closely with the leaders of a eugenicist foundation once described by a leading newspaper as a ‘neo-Nazi organization.’ He has made a series of racist statements about Latinos and worried that they were outbreeding whites.”

I, for one, was comforted to hear the warm Southern drawl
put on by Ohio treasurer and senatorial candidate Josh Mandel while he
campaigned for Mitt Romney before Beallsville coal miners on Wednesday.

As someone who recently spent six months living and
working in Montgomery, Ala., it brought me back to simpler times when
summer nights were spent drinking sweet tea spiked with rum on a porch and
it was for some reason still OK to refer to a grown black man as “boy.”

So when I heard Josh Mandel extoll the virtues of coal in a
drawl reminiscent of fresh butter spread on cornbread, I immediately
thought, “shucks, this guy gets me — he’s one of us.”

Wait, what’s that? Mandel hails from Lyndhurst, a
Cleveland suburb that’s the Hyde Park of Northern Ohio? He’s never even
eaten cheese grits? (Editor’s note: CityBeat could not independently
verify that Josh Mandel has in fact never eaten cheese grits.) Well now I
just feel put on.

The Enquirer reported that Mandel had never publicly used a Southern accent before.

"As if blowing off work and hiring unqualified campaign
workers and friends at taxpayer expense wasn't evidence enough of his
blatant disregard for the people who elected him treasurer expecting
that he'd do his job, Josh Mandel has now stooped to faking his accent
as a means of earning votes," Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Andrew
Zucker said in a statement. "It's sad, it's pathetic and unfortunately
it's concrete proof that he is just another politician who can't be
trusted."

Sounding folksy or down-homey is nothing new in presidential politics.

When campaigning in Alabama, Romney famously dropped
“y’alls” into his speech and spoke of his newfound love for “cheesy
grits” and catfish (my editor in Montgomery was quick to point out to
me, another carpetbagger, that any real Southerner knows they’re cheese
grits, not cheesy grits).

“If you’re going to pander, at least pander well, and this
isn’t pandering well,” Stephen Gordon, a Republican consultant based in
Birmingham, Ala., told the Boston Herald shortly after Romney made his
remarks.

“People in the Deep South have a bit of a natural distrust
for Northerners, especially folks from the Northeast,” said Gordon, who
is not affiliated with any campaign in the Republican presidential
contest. “There are cultural differences, stemming all the way back to
the Civil War, and they affect the way people perceive Mr. Romney.”

Romney is by no means the first to affect an accent to fit in with the natives.

Both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton adopted drawls while on campaign stops in the South. Though those
two former presidents, from Texas and Arkansas respectively, had the
bona fides to pull it off.

As other states come under fire, Ohio hints at voter ID law

It seems Ohio may soon get a controversial voter ID law.
While speaking at a Tea Party event in Cincinnati on Monday, Secretary of State
Jon Husted said the General Assembly is likely to take up a voter ID law
after the November election.

“I was listening to a show one night where they talked
about these onerous rules, these onerous photo ID rules and the onerous
rules in Ohio on photo ID,” he said. “Well, the photo ID law in Ohio is
not onerous. As a matter of fact, I suspect the General Assembly will
take up a more strict version of what we have after what we’ve been
through with this election process.”

Later on, an audience member commented on the issue by
pointing out Ohioans can currently identify themselves with 12 different
types of ID. In response, Husted clarified his position: “We need to
streamline that because it’s really hard for a poll worker to know
exactly what they’re supposed to be checking. And I’m quite confident
the legislature is going to take that issue up.”

Under current Ohio law, voters can go to the polls with
state ID cards, driver’s licenses, military IDs, utility bills,
paychecks, bank statements and other forms of ID. Republicans have sometimes
criticized the many options, particularly for not being state-issued and not requiring a photo.

Democrats criticize ID laws for suppressing voters. A study from researchers
at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis
found nearly 700,000 young, minority voters will be unable to
cast a ballot due to voter ID laws. Both young and minority voters tend
to side with Democrats.

Republicans say the laws are necessary to protect elections from
voter fraud. However, studies suggest in-person voter fraud is not a
serious, widespread issue. A News21 report, a Carnegie-Knight
investigative reporting project that looked at national public records,
found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter fraud since 2000. That’s less
than one case a year nationwide.

The audio clips from the event, which was provided by the Ohio Democratic Party, can be heard here and here.

Husted’s office could not be immediately reached for comment. This story will be updated if a comment becomes available.

UPDATE (4:25 P.M.): Matt McClellan, spokesperson for Husted, called CityBeat after this story was published.

"The Tea Party has generally been critical of the secretary's position on voter ID," he said, referring to Husted's past opposition of strict voter ID laws. "The comments he made at the event last night were environmental in general about what the secretary thought had been happening at the statehouse. His position, in general, is unchanged."

When pressed about what Husted meant when he advocated for "streamlining" laws, McClellan said Husted supported "simplification" of the current system. McClellan could not offer more details on what that means, and he said specifics would be up to the legislature to decide.

Chris Redfern, Ohio Democratic Party chairman, responded to Husted’s suggestions in a statement: “As
if Secretary of State Husted has not done enough to undermine access to
Ohio’s polls, now he’s planning a secret post-Election Day assault on
what forms of identification voters can present to cast a ballot. It’s
no surprise that after slashing voting access across the state, using
his office for partisan advantage, and lying about Issue 2, now Husted
is making plans to create obstacles for African Americans and seniors to
vote.”

U.S. Senate candidates argue over records, economy, social policy

In the first of three debates for Ohio’s seat in the U.S.
Senate, Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown and Republican challenger Josh
Mandel agreed on little and clashed on a lot. Each candidate mostly focused on the opposing candidate's record, but the debate today did move to substantial differences in policy at some
points.

The debate started with opening statements from a
noticeably feisty Brown, who criticized Mandel for calling his vote for the
auto bailout “un-American.” On the other side of the aisle, Mandel began his
opening statement with a joke about shaving before he turns 36. The joke was
the last time either of the men spoke with a light heart.

The candidates blasted each other mostly for their
records. Mandel touted Ohio's and the nation’s higher unemployment rate since Brown
took office in 2006, energy prices and the U.S. debt. He also said the Senate had
not passed a budget in three years, although Congress has actually passed
budget resolutions in that time.

Brown fired back with claims Mandel had filled the state treasurer’s office
with cronies. He also criticized Mandel for running for four different
political offices in seven years. In his closing statement, Brown said Mandel
is “too concerned about running for his next job” to be trusted.

On substance, Brown and Mandel criticized just about
everything about each other. Brown claimed Mandel signed away his “right to
think” by agreeing to lobbyist Grover Norquist’s pledge to not raise taxes
while in office. He said the pledge makes it so if Mandel does take office, he’ll
never be able to close tax loopholes for big corporations.

Mandel defended the pledge by saying, “I’m proud to stand
for lower taxes in our state and lower taxes in our country.” He added, “I will
do everything I can to advocate for lower taxes across the board for the middle
class and job creators as well.”

The term “job creators” is typically used in politics to reference wealthy Americans, who Republicans claim create jobs through the theory
of trickle-down economics. The economic theory states that wealthy Americans
will hire more lower-class Americans if they have more money and freedom, essentially
creating a trickle-down effect on wealth from the rich to the poor. Although
Republicans still tout the theory, some economists, including Nobel Prize
winner Paul Krugman, say the financial crisis of 2008 and the deregulation that
led to it prove trickle-down economics do not work.

The candidates also debated their positions on the
auto bailout. Mandel said he would not
have voted for the auto bailout if he was in the Senate in 2009. In his defense, he cited the experience of Delphi workers, who lost part of their pensions as part of the deal auto companies made with workers after the federal bailout. Mandel then said, “I’m
not a bailout senator. He’s the bailout senator.”

Brown responded by saying, “These are real jobs and real
people.” He then cited examples of people helped by the growing auto industry.
Brown’s arguments are backed by economic data, which has repeatedly credited
the growing auto industry for the nation’s growing economy. In the first
quarter of 2012, the auto industry was credited for half of the nation’s
economic growth.

When he was asked about higher education, Brown established the key
difference between the candidates in terms of economic policy. Brown said his policies in favor of government investment in higher
education are about supporting the middle class to create growth that
starts in the middle and spreads out, while Mandel supports tax cuts that emphasize a
trickle-down approach. Mandel did not deny the claims, and instead blamed Brown’s
policies for the high unemployment rate and debt issues.

The men continued to show similar contrasts on the
budget, taxes and economy throughout the entire debate, but there seemed to be
some common ground regarding energy independence. When the topic came to hydraulic fracturing —
or “fracking” — Brown said becoming energy independent would have to involve
all possible energy sources. In substance, Mandel agreed, although he also
praised fracking regulations recently passed by the Ohio legislature and Gov.
John Kasich.

As far as energy issues go, the agreement stopped there.
When Brown was asked about President Barack Obama's alleged “war on coal,” Brown said there was no war
on coal and claimed there are more coal jobs and coal produced in
Ohio than there were five years ago. Mandel disagreed and claimed there is a war on coal. He added if
Obama is the general in the war on coal, Brown is Obama's “lieutenant.”Brown previously supported federal regulations on mercury that some in the coal industry, including the Ohio Coal Association, claim will force coal-fired power plants to shut down. The regulations go into effect in 2015.

On abortion, Mandel proudly claimed he was
pro-life, while Brown said, “Unlike Josh Mandel, I trust Ohio women to make
their own health care decisions.” Brown also criticized Mandel for not
establishing exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother in his anti-abortion stance.

Many more issues, from term limits to Middle Eastern
culture, were covered in the debate. The candidates drew sharp contrasts in all
these areas with Brown typically holding the liberal position and Mandel
typically holding the conservative position. But despite the feisty language
and deep policy contrasts, when the debate ended, the candidates smiled, shook
hands and patted each other on the back. They will meet again in Columbus on
Thursday and Cincinnati on Oct. 25.